


thing on a string (to be thrown and retrieved)

by dysprositos



Series: It Hasn’t Been My Day, My Week, My Month, Or Even My Decade [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Dissociation, Gen, Giant Spiders, Mind Control, dependent on reader interpretation, fearpocalypse, implied possibility of bestiality, implied possibility of cannibalism, implied possibility of non-con, smashing clocks, the point is the protagonist is straight up not having a good time right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24653077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dysprositos/pseuds/dysprositos
Summary: There is a factory in the East End of London that produces silk and human misery.
Series: It Hasn’t Been My Day, My Week, My Month, Or Even My Decade [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782421
Kudos: 18





	thing on a string (to be thrown and retrieved)

There is a factory in the East End of London that produces silk and human misery. A woman known only as Milady oversees and directs the giant spiders that spin silk, the humans that cut and wind and dye and move the silk, the humans that feed the giant spiders, and the humans that feed the giant spiders. Her orders are beyond question, comment, argument. Those who receive them learn quickly enough to be glad to be directed by silk-threads and not by Milady’s voice, for the orders she gives aloud are for her entertainment, or tests, invitations to rebel or else hate yourself for obeying. Otherwise, nobody speaks.

In the makeshift worker’s barracks, after lights out and after the Eye of the Beholder broadcast has turned to static, the others whisper to each other encouragement to rebel, to defy Milady, to sabotage the work at least, to prepare to respond to one of Milady’s reprehensible orders with “Fuck you” rather than a meek “Yes, milady.” No one can figure out why no one does; but you saw it once, a worker ordered to spider-feeding duty stiffen and put down his wheelbarrow more forcefully than necessary, wheel around to confront her—and then bow and say “Yes, milady.” His knuckles were white on the wheelbarrow handles; he did his work for the day with mechanical perfection and at the end of his shift took off his own coveralls, folded them neatly, and wrapped his own body up in a feeding-web with a smile on his face and terror in his eyes.

Another worker took his coveralls, his cot, his duties. There will always be another worker to take the place of anyone rebelling into spider food, and all you can do is survive. Routine and dissociation once more become your friend, insulating you from the horrors around you, and the near-silence of the factory floor keeps your usual job-terminating problem, i.e. no brain-mouth filter, from manifesting.

Until one day, distracted by your dissipating fugue, you acknowledge an out-loud order with a respectful “Yes, Lady Cane.”

She walks you into her office, which you’re distantly grateful for. Your blood had frozen in your veins at the expression on her face when she’d registered what you had called her, before her features had arranged into a pleasant smile that still somehow reminded you of twitching chelicerae. The exercise of putting one foot in front of the other, of dutifully trailing her into the small room on the edge of the factory floor, may be the only reason your blood is moving at all. There’s certainly not enough going to your face or your hands, which have gone cold. You stand before her desk as she seats herself behind it, and when she says “Sit”, your legs fold underneath you before you even notice the chair a couple feet to your left. She doesn’t correct you and you’re left knelt on the thin carpet.

“Now isn’t this cosy?” she asks, her tone light, as if you’ve been invited to tea and not to find out if you will die. She smiles again, and a tiny spider runs over the back of your right hand, and you do not flinch at either.

She wants a response. You nod as you make absolutely certain that you have the right words before you open your mouth. “Yes, milady.”

“Tell me,” she says, leaning forward, all business, “where you learned that name.” It occurs to you that she may not actually have the power to compel you to answer honestly, not when she doesn’t know the honest answer (unlike, if the Eye of the Beholder hosts are to be believed, the Archivist). Eyes and spiders are different powers, you’re pretty sure (although Annab—Milady is unblinking as she fixes all of hers on you, waiting for an answer). But it also occurs to you that you don’t even know if the truth will displease her, and if it does what answer _would_ save you. Honesty, here, is the best policy.

So you tell her about working IT at the Magnus Institute, about the Archival documents that wouldn’t record and the time you were sent there to make one of the periodic fruitless attempts anyway. About the statement.

“You didn’t have to _read_ the statement, did you?” she asks, a dangerous edge in her voice. There’s a spider on the back of your neck but you don’t need to shake your head for her to read the answer on your face. Before you can work out whether you can die on her command and, if so, work out the trick to doing so voluntarily, she answers herself: “I suppose you just couldn’t help yourself.” She sounds amused. Amused means you can live, for now. She leans forward, her eyes (two) twinkling. “How long did you have the nightmares?”

“Months, milady,” you answer honestly. “Not every night, but—often enough. It’s one of the reasons I quit.”

“You really don’t like spiders, do you?” Her voice thrums with mirth, and the spider on the back of your neck has moved, so you feel relatively safe in shaking your head. When you were a child, you’d heard of a story of tourists taking every precaution against jaguars and piranhas and quicksand but dying nonetheless of bites from deadly spiders lurking under the toilet seats. You’d checked before sitting down for years, checked your shoes just as diligently before putting them on, checked your limbs when you woke up. That was what you hated about spiders, that no matter how diligently you tried to protect yourself from the dangers of the world, a tiny bug could come out of nowhere and kill you just as dead.

Or the world as you knew it could end and you could follow the radio’s advice and carefully stay off of giant carousels and out of the trenches and away from too-dark darkness and too-friendly strangers and fog which crept and curled and would not be forced away by a battery-powered handheld fan, and still end up in spidersilk chains and on your knees in Annabelle Cane’s office.

No, you really don’t like spiders.

“And yet, you never hesitate when I direct you near them here in the factory.”

You’ve never _let_ yourself hesitate, not with her eyes on you. (You disposed of his husk.) “I’m so much more scared of you,” you blurt out.

She says nothing, concentrating on something—no longer amused—and _this_ is how you are going to die. Eventually she says, “Ah,” in a tone of enlightenment, and fires off a set of questions: Did you tell your co-workers at the Institute about the statement? Have you told your co-workers at the Factory about the statement? Have you told anyone her name? Has anyone shown any sign of knowing it? No, no, no and you would never, no. She smiles grimly when you tell her you would never and you cannot tell if it’s because of course you never will now that you’re slated for the feeding-webs.

Finally, she wraps up her questioning and leans forward, looking deadly serious again. (So many eyes again.) “You’ve caught my attention,” she says softly, and every hair on your body stands on end.

You don’t _mean_ to interrupt her, you don’t mean to say _any_ thing, but your mouth opens anyway. “If the name Annabelle Cane ever crosses your lips again, we’ll see how long a person can live without ever moving under their own volition again,” you say, and it takes you a full minute to realise what just happened and what it means, and to parse the threat.

She only leans back in her chair when she’s sure you’ve got the message. “I’m looking forward to working with you,” she says, and dismisses you.

You’d thought you were in hell before. You were wrong. Now, you can no longer ignore the horrors of the Factory, when your hands are perpetrating so many of them. Sometimes, she has you give the out-loud orders, which doesn’t make you popular among your fellow workers when you return to the barracks. The idle talk after lights out becomes less of rebellion, where you can hear it at least, and more of attacking Milady’s favourite. You’re not there every night, though. Some nights you lie in her bed. Some nights you lie in the spiders’, once in a cocoon in the feeding-web, though you’re cut out of it for your next shift.

Milady never runs out of creative ways to use your body, to test your obedience and your fear, and it occurs to you one day that _At least you’re doing it of your own volition_ is no longer the consolation it once was, as you struggle to swallow, to remind yourself (Institute bathroom graffiti) _Meat is meat_.

The only bright spot in your routine is the cathartic moment of smashing a timepiece to bits every day at the consensus noon, an activity which Milady has begun providing clocks and watches for. The day she found out and interrogated you about it, you managed to fall asleep after lights out (by no means a guarantee, these days). You dreamt she’d coaxed a tiny spider into your ear as you slept and it now lived in your brain. When you awoke, you knew you could never, ever ask her if it was true, for fear her eyes would light up and she would say, “It _wasn’t_....”

Then there’s the time—and it’s a disjointed memory, you hope it was a dream, a nightmare, not a real experience—when you were stood right against a bed of glowing coals, Milady across it from you, and she ordered you to kneel anyway. The coals burned right through the material of your coveralls, but your knees were unharmed, protected as they were by shiny black chitin that glinted in the light the same way Milady’s eyes did as she smiled in satisfaction. She sent you to get a new uniform and continue your work, and when you next had the opportunity and thought to check, you were covered in skin just as you’ve always been. Just as Milady has always been, except when she isn’t. It’s something you try not to think about. There’s so much you try not to think about, these days.

And so it goes until the day you smash your 3,653rd timepiece.


End file.
